


The Effects of Quantum Entanglement on Teenaged Private Eyes

by Querulousgawks



Series: Tumblr Prompts [1]
Category: Veronica Mars (TV)
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Angst, F/M, Friendship, References to Suicide, Season/Series 01 Spoilers, Soulmates AU, Tumblr Prompt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-28
Updated: 2015-05-28
Packaged: 2018-04-01 15:05:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,495
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4024396
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Querulousgawks/pseuds/Querulousgawks
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She had just given up on a stakeout, the night she felt the bond come to life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Effects of Quantum Entanglement on Teenaged Private Eyes

**Author's Note:**

  * For [BryroseA](https://archiveofourown.org/users/BryroseA/gifts).



> For bryroseA, who requested Logan/Veronica and soulmates, and whose series Stay With Me will always influence anything I write about these two. 
> 
> Apologies to both Carl Sagan and my ninth grade biology teacher, who was infinitely nicer than Ms Hauser but equally reluctant to screen a video about a scientific theory that clashed with her religious beliefs (in her case, the theory of evolution).

 

The good news was, you needed a parent’s permission to attend the junior year Soulmate Seminar - kids without the slip would be redirected to study hall. 

The bad news was, the Neptune school board’s decision to permit the class at all had made it into the paper Keith Mars read every morning, foiling Veronica’s plan to avoid this conversation and steal herself 45 beautiful minutes of relative peace and quiet. Her hastily constructed arguments - that the whole concept was ridiculous, that she could get a little MI paperwork done in that study hall, that she might actually have misplaced that permission form - were all countered with her Dad’s rare mild-mannered stubbornness, so much harder to oppose than his angry insistence. An open mind was important, school was for schoolwork,and had she by any chance misplaced it in the shredder? He would write her a note. 

Stalemate.

She had a secret weapon, felt the option of using it fill the pause after their last volley.  _Fat lot of good the old bond did for you and Mom, in the end._ But she’d gotten warier of friendly fire, these last few months. Backup, whose eyes had been ticking peacefully between them throughout the exchange, whined into the waiting silence; her father dropped his hand over hers. 

She went to the goddamn class.

*** 

Ms. Hauser was clearly showing the documentary under duress. She hovered by the projector the whole time, scowling as Carl Sagan sonorously explained sub-atomic entanglement (‘which appears to activate only in the case of a  _life threat_  to one half of what the  _lay_ person may erroneously call...a  _soulbond_ ’) and pounced on the pause button almost before he stopped speaking. 

Looking relieved, she wheeled the projector away and flicked the lights on. Six hands went up. Ms. Hauser’s sigh ruffled the stack of permission slips on her desk. 

“Go ahead, Madison.”

“Soulmates are only a theory, though, right Ms. H?”

“Aw, my soul will mate yours anytime, baby.” Dick, of course.“

You’d have to have one first,” Carmen muttered under her breath, and Veronica smiled for the first time that day. More loudly, Carmen said, “it’s a theory with a lot of evidence. People show up out of nowhere when a total stranger gets sick or injured, no other explanation for it?”

“Our church says - ” another kid piped up from the back, and the conversation got heated. Scowling, Mrs Hauser let it run for few minutes before calling pointedly on Meg, who still had her hand in the air. 

Meg tossed Carmen an apologetic glance and said hesitantly, “But even if people are emitting some signal, it can’t travel faster than the speed of light, right? I mean, mates knowing instantly halfway across the world, that’s ridiculous." 

Veronica only looked up for Meg’s question -class discussions could still turn ugly the instant she entered them, so she had checked out to draw aimlessly in her notebook margin, trying to focus only on the slow drag of her pen. Distracted now, she watched in fascination as Mrs. Hauser’s face grew even more pinched. Her lips had settled in so tightly, it seemed like she had to crack them open to answer. "It’s quantum, Miss Manning.”

“But what does that  _mean_?”

“It means that if you see that question on the PSAT, you select the letter next to the word 'quantum.’ And since I am not legally required to discuss this further, why doesn’t everybody take out their study guides and review,  _quietly,_ until the bell.”

The class settled down grudgingly and by degrees, and Veronica sighed in relief.  _Done. And not one crack about my slutty reputation, spiritual or otherwise?_  She counted even the small victories, these days. Permitting herself another grin shared with Carmen, Veronica returned to her notes. 

And froze, staring at the margin where she’d drawn a long, shaded chain of water droplets.

****

_She had just given up on a stakeout, the night she felt the bond come to life. Distress roared through her, tightness in her chest and the burn of chlorine and whiskey in her throat, and it didn’t let up even as she she jerked the car into a U-turn and headed away from home. Toward the source of the pain, she realized, the direction dictated by the furious beacon that now thrummed steady and demanding behind her ribs. She sped past the community pool, past the Neptune country club, past…the gates of her old development, and then the Kane house, the Manning’s, on into the heart of the 90909. She knew where she was going now, from reason and memory as much as her damn quantum entanglements._

_Only one person left in here with whom she shared even a cursory attachment. _Elementary, Watson_ _.__

_Logan Echolls was drowning._

_He had made it to the edge of the pool when she got there, an elbow hooked around the ladder as his head bobbed above and below the water without any sign of his control. She would never have gotten him out, otherwise - it took all her leverage and some awkward maneuvering with the skimmer to pull him even halfway. No one had stopped her at the gate, where her shaking fingers entered an old code without pause, and no one answered her yells as she skidded to the patio’s edge._

_No one saw her close her eyes when the dead weight in her arms seized up, coughing, then began to help pull himself onto the concrete._   _She flopped back, legs still in the water, as Logan crawled barely past her to vomit._ _The echoing burn in her chest was fading, slowly._

 _“Wha’ fuck, V'ronica,” he whispered eventually, and_ _there - the bond snuffed out altogether._ _She croaked out a laugh that sounded worse than him, that felt like it was cracking her open._ _Mortal peril over, apparently. Time to go home._

 _As soon as she could stand up. Meanwhile, she lolled her head sideways to look at Logan - it had been weeks since she’d seen him at all, and even longer since he’d looked at her with anything but a sneer. His face was blank and open with misery, now, his eyes puffy and skin flushed with burst capillaries._ _“Veronica,” he repeated, staring at her with slowly increasing clarity, “you, you knew. You’re my -”_

 _It hit her, finally, the full implications of her adrenaline-fueled rush over here. Logan had almost died, maybe on purpose, and she’d known. Because she was - which meant Lilly_ wasn’t -  _for either of them. Suddenly she was furious. It didn’t change anything, she had still stood by her dad and Logan had still made her pay, had set the 09ers on her, ending in the party where there hadn’t been any goddamn rescue for her, had there? And now he was just throwing himself away?_ _She took a deep breath before the rage could bubble over, tried to keep her voice blank as she said, “it’s just physics, Logan.” No romance for the ages here._

_His eyes narrowed. There was the face she needed to remember, cold and hard with only the barest evidence of pain underneath. “Bitch,” he said._

_“Fucker,” she snarled back, and took a small satisfaction in watching his jaw drop. It wasn’t enough, though, and the rage spilled out after all, and she couldn’t even track what she was saying until she gasped out “not you too, not all of you,” and heard it fall into the silence of his sudden, complete stillness._

_“I won’t. Veronica -” He didn’t move towards her - you could never fault his instincts - but he met her eyes with an old steadiness, the certainty he’d used to talk her through freezing on a surf board or Lilly’s narrow window ledge._ _“I promise,” Logan said, and Veronica wasn’t forgetting_ anything  _but hearing it let her draw air back into her lungs._

***

The bell rang, jolting Veronica from paralysis, and she scrambled for her dropped pen as her more prepared classmates hustled from the room. Only Meg and Carmen lingered, eyeing each other. Veronica tried to hide her grin. Two of the most polite people she knew, unable to leave an argument in class? Might actually be worth Mr. Wu’s Late Look. But then Meg bit out a crisp, “What do you think, Veronica?” without taking her gaze off Carmen.

A familiar scuffle in the hall distracted them - the high whine and quick low rejoinders of Dick and Logan catching up. 

“Dude, you missed all the  _maaaa_ ting!" 

"Aww, Dick, did Ms. H finally make a man out of you?”

“Gross, asshole, we’re going to lunch!”

Still locked in their staring contest, Meg and Carmen watched each other wince in synchrony, and burst out laughing together.  _Saved from_ that  _conversation,_ Veronica thought, almost positive that she’d wanted to be. She dropped her eyes to her notes for another long moment before she carefully closed the notebook, swept everything into her bag, and followed her friends out of the room.


End file.
